Moscow Credit Bank Posts First Loss Among Russia’s Top 10 Banks
A bank closely linked to Rosneft, a major player in the oil industry, has made headlines as the first in Russia’s top 10 banks by assets to report a net loss, highlighting escalating issues within the banking sector.
Moscow Credit Bank (MKB), noted as the seventh-largest bank in Russia, managing roughly 700 billion rubles (about $9.1 billion) in customer deposits, announced a net loss of 9 billion rubles (approximately $117 million) for the fourth quarter of 2025. This information comes from financial statements reported by the Interfax news agency.
December was particularly tough, with MKB incurring a loss of 8.2 billion rubles (around $106.6 million) during that month alone.
Despite the struggles at year-end, MKB did manage to remain profitable throughout 2025, though its net profit for the year dropped by about a third compared to 2024, settling at 21.1 billion rubles (roughly $274.3 million).
Issues surfaced mid-year when the volume of overdue loans skyrocketed. From January to September, problem loans surged by a staggering 700%, reaching 668 billion rubles (around $8.7 billion), which accounted for 28% of the bank’s total loan portfolio.
According to reports referenced by the Kommersant Economic Daily, a recent audit by the central bank brought to light significant troubles at MKB, resulting in changes to the bank’s senior management team.
Overall, the banking industry in Russia concluded the year with profits amounting to 3.5 trillion rubles (about $45.5 billion). However, this figure is 300 billion rubles (approximately $3.9 billion) less than what was reported in 2024, primarily due to rising credit losses.
As of late October, 11.2% of corporate loans, totaling 10.4 trillion rubles (around $135.2 billion), and 6.1% of personal loans, amounting to 2.3 trillion rubles (about $29.9 billion), were considered problematic according to central bank statistics.
Defaults on payments have impacted various sectors, including defense, metal production, construction, and even oil and gas firms. Experts from the government-run Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasts (CMASF) have characterized this as a banking crisis in Russia.
CMASF indicated that the crisis is developing in a “latent manner” as banks are restructuring bad loans and the state is taking control of the financial system. In the previous year, state-owned banks received 1.2 trillion rubles (around $13.3 billion) from the National Wealth Fund as what CMASF termed “emergency recapitalization.”
Moscow Credit Bank was founded by billionaire Roman Avdeyev and found itself associated with Rosneft in 2017 when it faced bankruptcy. This partnership extended to other financiers within Moscow’s “banking ring,” such as FC Otkritie, Binbank, and Promsvyazbank.
Rosneft significantly supported MKB by injecting capital and committing long-term deposits set to mature as far out as 2066. The firm also transferred hundreds of billions of rubles to the bank through reverse repo transactions to facilitate its operations.
